The Svalbardian Way
by Alex087
Summary: The bridge to the stars, created by Lord Asriel many years ago, now its Will's turn. Based on the His Dark Materials Trilogy, a story that will grab you, and keep you hanging on for the best bit. What secrects lie in the Svalbardian Way?
1. In and Out

**In and Out**

In the dark mist of the winter, a light gradually appeared in the sky over the mountains of Svalbard. The ice bears all looked up at the wondrous light, as if they knew what it was. The light began to twist and turn into a zigzagging trail, leading to something that shouldn't be here. The bears knew it straight away, there was a human in their midst. They climbed the rest of the way up the steep but smooth mountain, on which their home stood, and looked over the peak. Sure enough, there was a human approaching, but without a dæmon. There are only two types humans that where without a dæmon; those who's dæmons where hidden inside and those who's dæmons had been cut from then.

This human looked very much like he had a dæmon inside, and Iorek Byrnison knew it for sure. He had seen the humans from the other world, the world where Lyra's fierce friend Will had come through from into Cittagazze through a window cut with the legendary Subtle Knife. He had then helped Lyra and Lyra had helped him, but then they where parted. Iorek had a strange feeling that this human walking towards the mountain that he and two other ice bears from his kingdom stood. He suddenly knew that his thoughts were right when the human looked up with a certain happiness on his face. Iorek began to descend the other side of the mountain towards the man and to greet him. The man had stopped and was waiting to see if the other bears would follow, but they remained stationary at the top of the peak, looking down in wonder. Iorek reached the man and then noticed that the light had stopped flowing towards him and was now forming a circle in the air above where he and the man stood.

Iorek looked into the man's eyes and then spoke only four words, "Is that really you?"

"Yes, Iorek", the man replied.

"I can't believe how much you look like your father", Iorek commented.

"I didn't know you knew my father, well, I didn't know much about him", the man answered in the same tone of voice as if his voice box had been fix on the same level.

"Yes, he passed through on the bridge that Lord Asriel had created, from Cittagazze I presume", Iorek explained "He didn't quite know where he was at that point, of course who would."

"Yes, indeed", the man said "I wish I could have known him better, that's part of the reason I came here, to find you."

"And why would you need me?" Iorek asked, slightly puzzled.

"Lyra told me that you would help me if I needed anything, and I thought that you might know the name of the witch who killed my father." The man explained.

"Yes, I do", replied Iorek "But I must ask, why do you seek this information?"

"I need to know why she did it" the man said with a flare of anger in his voice "She took away one of the most important things in my life, and she took him away from me, without even an explanation."

"Well, I could call on Serafina Pekkala" Iorek suggested.

"Yes, please, that would be very helpful" the man replied.

Iorek turned and said "Follow", so the man did. He led him back up the mountain to where the other bears were waiting. The two of them looked at him with complete bewilderment, as if it was complete inhuman not to have a dæmon that follows you around, which in their world it is. They followed Iorek and the man down the other side of the mountain to the cave where the ice bears all live, keeping a close watch for anything unordinary. Iorek went over to his chair sitting in view of all the other bears and began to introduce the man.

"This man is William Parry, a boy from the world on the other side of Cittagazze" Iorek explained and the other bears in turn went up to Will and greeted him and then bowing to Iorek as their King. After what seemed like a very lengthy welcome ceremony, Iorek took Will to his quarters and sat him down on the block of ice he uses for a bed.

"There is no need to be afraid Will" Iorek said in as calmer voice as possible "The bears can't harm you now, and will keep a close watch on you to see that no harm comes to you from anything else."

"Ok, I was just quite nervous standing in front of a large group of bears at first" said Will, shivering a little from the cold. Iorek ushered him out of the bear's ice palace and out into the snow, which seemed to have stopped. Will looked up at the sky to see what looked like a group of large birds, but then he realised that they weren't birds, they were witches. He looked at Iorek who held a calling flower that Serafina must have given to him and Will realised that he had called them for Will's purpose. Iorek walked a little further on and then yelled"Down here" to the witches. One of them stopped and turned around in the direction of Will and Iorek. She then began to approach them fairly quickly and then lowered herself to the ground.

"What is the purpose of this call?" she asked Iorek and he subtly pointed at Will. She turned to him.

"Ah, Will, what are you doing in this world?" she asked sweetly.

"I came to find out why my father was killed" he said, the flare of anger appearing in his voice once more.

"Oh, I see" Serafina said slightly stunned.

"Is there a problem Serafina" asked Will, wondering if he had been to rash.

"No, no, I will tell you all I know" she said and cleared her throat "Your father was under a different name here in our world, Stanislaus Grumman and a witch who is no longer alive called Juta Kamainen fell in love with him. He was interested so he rejected her and left her weeping for ages. She swore she would get her own back on him but she had no idea that he was your father before she killed him. She killed herself right in front of you, didn't she?"

"Yes" Will said, puzzled at how she had known.

"I suspect that when you told her she was so scared of you, having seen the Subtle Knife holstered in your sheath that she didn't want to cause you anymore pain, so she took her own life as well" Serafina finished.

"Didn't want to cause me anymore pain" Will said with anger and rage "How is there a way of causing more pain than killing my father, who I spent ages searching for, only for the second I realised that it's him, he's dead the next, I would have liked to have killed that witch right there and then but now I wouldn't want to, I've changed now." Will looked into the sky and saw the light returning. He stood there looking in amazement, wondering if he could now, do what Lord Asriel had done so many years ago, and create the next bridge to another world.


	2. Some Dreams Last Forever

Some Dreams Last Forever

Nothing left in the once beautiful gardens of Jordan College except for the few flower beds housing various species of plants, blossoming luminously in the dark night sky. High above the gardens of the college sat a young woman, on the roof of the great building, with her dæmon scampering around on the dormer window ledge next to her. She looked over and whispered "Hush Pan, there are people sleeping below this roof, you can't make so much noise" and at her words the wild cat dæmon stopped dead next to the window and then began to approach her. She stroked her dæmon for awhile admiring the stars in the sky and the large clock tower that overlooked them. She suddenly stood up and looked right into the open top of the tower and sure enough, she had been right, there was a cloaked figure leaning over the edge, staring right into her eyes. She quickly stooped down and climbed through the window before the person could get a good look at her, but how long had they been there. She didn't see the person's dæmon, if they even had one. The thought remained stuck in her head for the rest of the night; she was virtually restless, managing to catch around an hours sleep before being woken up by a vicious crash coming from outside her window. She pulled back the curtains and saw a golden eagle lying flat on the roof tiles beyond the glass, lifeless. She opened the window and her dæmon, Pantalaimon sped straight over to the edge of the roof and looked down. Directly below he could see a man's body, cloaked, still as a rock, dead.

She went back over to the window sill and looked at Lyra deeply and she felt that something bad had happened. She climbed out on to the roof and looked over the edge and saw the sight that her dæmon had just seen a minute ago. She then realised that it was the person who she had seen staring at her the night before whom she now see had been a man. The eagle suddenly puffed into a mass of gold dust which floated graciously for a moment and then disappeared completely. Lyra wondered who the man was and why he had been up in the clock tower so late at night and also how he managed to get past the night watchman. They two of them climbed back inside and then Lyra pulled out one of the drawers from her bedside table and took out the alethiometer. She flicked the golden lid up and began to twist the three keys that moved the arrows pointing to the selected pictures which outlined the clockwork centre of the compass. She closed her eyes and saw that the man was of another world, another world where they had the same uniforms, the same equipment and most importantly, another world where they had dæmons. Lyra sat on her bed in bewilderment. She had never thought that there could ever be another world which was virtually the same as hers. She tried to clear her head but the same memory of the man standing at the top of the clock tower was stuck in her mind, and there was no chance of getting it out easily.

She went down stairs for breakfast expecting to be welcomed by the usual spread, only to be shocked at the sight of everyone sitting silently in the main hall staring at the stairwell that she had just appeared from. A bearded man walked past her and gave her a look of complete distain. She looked back, wondering what was wrong with everybody, unless. She suddenly realised that the man must have been found outside and for some reason thought she might have something to do with it. She turned back to the stairwell and began to go back up and then she heard a man's voice saying "Stop." She turned back to the stairs after briefly looking round at the group of people once more and went back up to her room. She pondered on the thought of why everybody suspected her; it couldn't possibly be because he had fallen from the roof outside her bedroom window. Then it suddenly dawned on her, the man must have seen her go in through the window and then climbed down the part of the tower that remained higher than the main roof and then silently crept across the roof. He would have been trying to open the window when he fell, was he after the alethiometer, or was it something even more priceless, herself. This though sent a shiver down Lyra's spine and then she lay back on her bed and tried to get some sleep. Several hours later she woke up of her own accord and looked out of the window. The sun was still visible but beginning to frequently hide behind the vast clusters of thick grey clouds, making the light less bright.

She opened her window to let some fresh air in and stood there for a few minutes to think over what had happened and how she was going to deal with the thoughts that were stuck in her mind. The night before, the man was just by himself, but one of her thoughts was, what if there are others, more of them looking for her, all over Oxford. If there were she would have little time to escape. She went over to the chest of drawers at the other side of the room from her bed and pulled out two of them. She then went over to a wardrobe and took out a small rucksack and began to pack the things she thought she would need most to aid her escape. She didn't know where she would go, how far she could get on foot and would she be able to survive. There had always been that feeling in the back of Lyra's mind, what if I don't make it. She waited until the sun had set and the night sky had drawn over the city. She slowly opened her door a few centimetres to make sure that there was no one patrolling the hallways yet. She then crept out and started down the hallway and down the stairs. Half way down the great marble stairwell she stopped suddenly as she had heard someone talking. She knelt down and peered through the gap in the cast iron banister railings.

She had seen the two people before, in the meeting that her father Lord Asriel had hosted, in which she had saved him from being poisoned, they had never mentioned their names before by she had an idea that they were people of some importance to the college. After a few minutes of waiting, Lyra heard the conversation come to an end; she knew that now was the time to make her move. The two men were much too engrossed in bidding each other farewell until the morning that she managed to slip past them very easily. She turned and saw one of them raise his hand and then began to point at the doorway in which she stood, she turned instinctively and began to run at a fast and steady pace out of the college gates, into the main street of Oxford, she knew she was a fair way ahead of them, if they had chosen to chase after her, of which the odds were very high. She carried on running until she reached a rather rural area of the grand city that she knew so well. This small village was much less built up and was surrounded by trees and fields stretching on for miles. She sat down on the nearest wall and took out the alethiometer again. She twisted the keys into the formation of her question and closed her eyes. The answer came to her straight away. The compass had told her to head north and it fitted with the question she had asked. She knew that if there was anywhere she could be safe it would be Svalbard.

She walked into an enclosed group of trees and set up a small tent that would be more or less invisible to the naked eye, even in the day. She crawled in and pulled a sleeping bag out of her rucksack, laid it out flat, got in and began to drift off to sleep. She was harshly woken in the morning by a small branch landing on the top of her tent, startling her. She immediately and got out of the tent. She began to pack everything up but then heard the sound of a twig snapping in the distance. She turned behind one of the trees and peered around the corner. Suddenly she felt a tap on her shoulder and the sound of a familiar voice saying "Do I know you?"


	3. The Subtle Trick

The Subtle Trick

In Svalbard, the night was drawing close, the cold air turning icy, and the snow merging into a blizzard, the bear king stood outside the cave of the ice bears, patrolling the area for something to eat. Inside, Will was going around the ice bears and joining in with what they were doing. Some were just lying on the ice; others were chipping ice from the walls to expand the cave a little more. Will was having a fair bit of fun with three other bears that were viciously digging their claws into the thick, clear ice. Iorek came running in yelling "Hide, the hunters are here, the hunters are here!" Will wondered what he meant by the hunters, but he had quite a good idea. He followed the other bears to safety and waited for them to arrive.

"Iorek, who or what are the hunters?" Will asked inquisitively.

Iorek looked down at him and said "They are humans like you, without dæmons on the outside, but with one difference, these humans have had their dæmons cut away from them, they have no soul, no emotions, nothing." Will looked fairly stunned, he had never heard of anyone in this world who didn't have a dæmon. He walked up to the opening of the cave and looked out and sure enough, there were people with out dæmons, with no emotional expression on their faces, slumping along like a toy robot.

Will tried his best not to let them see him and they hadn't until part of the wall of ice that he had been chipping at with a pickaxe fell of and the hunters saw him straight away. He gulped and then ran as fast as he could back to the safety of Iorek and the rest of the ice bears. He felt both afraid and guilty for he was the one who had been seen, the one that drew the hunters to the cave in the first place, he didn't know what to do. But then, he came up with an idea, he ran back over to the still empty opening and withdrew the Subtle knife from its sheath and concentrated. He went through all different kinds of feelings until he found the right one and then he cut a window to another world, the world of Cittagazze where the hunters would be caught by the spectres and have all of their remaining life taken out of them, leaving them virtually dead. He ran back and looked at Iorek and said "Don't worry; they're going to a better place."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Iorek.

"I opened a window into the crossroads world of Cittagazze, to lead the hunters to the spectres" Will explained rather pleased with himself.

"I see, well done Will, I'm proud to have you with us" Iorek commended him.

The bear king and Will walked over to where he had opened the window and he very carefully took the knife out to seal it shut. That was it they had beaten the hunters and Will had redeemed himself. He looked out over the mountains at the snow covered peaks and the rain filled valleys of the bear kingdom of Svalbard with incredulous gratitude. He went back inside to carry on with what he had left when the warning had come. Later on that night he and Iorek went down into what another bear had called the Meriddian Valley and it looked amazing. Will looked around at every detail with an even more bewildered look than before, he had never seen anything like it, not even in a science lesson at school or when he was travelling with Lyra to find his father. This was most definitely the most wondrous place he had ever seen.

Iorek beckoned him to turn left along a small, thin ridge than he could only just stay on without falling. They were now walking along the edge of one of the highest peaks in Svalbard. He looked down only to see a blur of snow covered rocks and large blocks of ice that must have been frozen solid for years. They finally got to the end of the narrow ridge and carried on along a much flatter area of ice. Iorek suddenly jumped out at an animal passing by and killed it straight away.

"So Iorek why are we here" Will asked.

"We are here to catch food for the others and for ourselves" he replied valiantly as he tossed the dead animal over to Will. Will picked it up and threw it over his shoulder, holding a tight grip on its tail. They moved on and after about an hour and a half they had plenty of food to feed the rest of the bears. In his rucksack Will had bought his own supplies in case he got stuck somewhere. Although he knew he still had them, he was happy to eat the meat of the dead animals that they had hunted down with other bears. He thought it more considerate to do that rather than sound fussy and eat his own food.

The two of them walked into the cave, dragging six dead animals each into the centre of the main area. The rest of the bears gathered round to look at their feast for that night and began to rip open the animals to remove the meat and displace the carcasses. Will grabbed a large slab of meat and began to gnaw at it like a scavenger. He hadn't eaten for hours and he had walked all the way from the coast line to more or less the centre of Svalbard in about five days, he was bound to act like that around food. After a little while all of the meat had be eaten and the feast was concluded by Iorek. All of the bears went off in different directions to go and sleep before the morning hunt. Will had no idea which way to go so he instinctively followed Iorek back to his quarters. Iorek turned around and said "You'd better get some rest now Will if you're going to go down to the south of Svalbard."

"You're taking me to the south of Svalbard, why?" Will asked puzzled yet pleased.

"That's where Serafina Pekkala's clan of witches live, on Lake Erna" the bear king explained.

"Oh, I see, and I'll be able to find out more from there?" Will agreed, "But where is Lyra, I would really like to see her again?"

"I believe she's on her way up here, to Svalbard, in search of you according to the witches" Iorek answered, "She may need you help."

"Is she making the journey on her own?" Will asked sounding a little worried.

"Yes, but don't worry, there en't nothing that Lyra can't get passed, no matter how long it takes, she's determined to find you." Iorek looked deeply into Will's eyes seeing a spark of truth and intelligence about him that he had never know before, when he was younger. Will looked into Iorek's dark black eyes, only seeing ruling, death, disaster and destruction. He knew that Iorek was good friends with the man who had aided his father in his search for the bearer of the Subtle Knife, Lee Scoresby, he held off an army of the authority to save John Parry's life. He and Iorek had fought many battles together side by side, and Will could tell that he missed him dearly. Will was his new partner now and he and Iorek would find out the reason why John Parry and Lee Scoresby were killed. They turned to the open night sky displaying all sorts of wonders beyond people's wildest dreams, stars and constellations billions of light years away and yet there they were, visible to them through a gap in the mountain. The green light of the aurora flowing across the heavenly white moon circling over the top of Iorek and Will, standing still looking at its magnificence.

Will pulled out a sleeping bag from his rucksack and laid it on the ground next to Iorek's ice bed. He walked out saying to Iorek "I'll be back in a minute." Iorek nodded and lay back on the ice. Will walked through the bears ice palace looking up and down seeing all sorts of different carvings and messages. Will looked at one closely and then cleared his head but it kept coming back, the word Bolvangar repeatedly ringing in his head. He clutched his head and began to breathe deeply to let all of the anger out of him. He walked away from the carving and started for the opening in the cave only to be stopped in his tracks by seeing an even more peculiar word carved neatly into the ice. Æsahættr. Will was baffled by the strangeness of the word carved in front of him; he had no idea what it was or what it meant. He walked outside into the cold to try and figure out what the two words which were now cast into his head. He wondered if Iorek would know what or where Bolvangar was, he had no doubt been here a very long time. He was unsure that anyone would know what Æsahættr meant; the only men he thought would even have a chance of knowing about it were his father and the man who helped him, Lee Scoresby, but two of them are now long gone. He pondered over the carvings once more, looking at them even close and every time he looked, the more agitated he got. He would have liked to have let out an extremely large yell, but knew it wouldn't go down at all well with the ice bears.

He walked around in circles for a few minutes and then heard the sound of footsteps coming from Iorek's quarters and then he saw Iorek slow walking towards him. He stopped and then said "I see you have found some of our carvings." Will looked back at them and then asked "Do you know anything about Blovangar?"

"Yes Will, it is a place in the north of Svalbard, where the authority used to take children to be cut away from their dæmons just like those hunters that you saw out there."

"It sounds horrible" said Will with a shocked expression on his face, "Is it still there?"

"No, it was destroyed when we and the gyptians won a battle against the Magesterium, we destroyed the place so that it could never be revisited." He explained. Will started to think about Lyra and where she was, if she was safe or not, but thought passed after a few seconds.

"What do you know of a think called Æsahættr?" Will asked in curiosity.

"Well, I know one thing about it, you have it" He said and Will's jaw dropped. Iorek pointed at the sheath tied around his waist and Will realised that it was the Subtle Knife, the weapon that could cut through anything, that he had had since he was twelve years old. He now realised that he had the one thing that could create another bridge, one like Lord Asriel's, but branching off to every world in existence. He felt a suddenly urge of power and commitment to the great legendary knife that had saved his life so many times. He owed Iorek a debt for this information and he would help him in any way possible in their search for the reason why Scoresby and John Parry had died. The bear king turned and ushered Will down the tunnel to his quarters once more and Will followed. He got into his sleeping bag and closed his eyes. He couldn't stop thinking about Lyra, the same thoughts came rushing through his head over and over. Is she alright, when will she get here, where is she. He knew that he couldn't find the answer. The only thing that could, lay safely wrapped up in Lyra's rucksack. The Alethiometer.


End file.
